As a website owner, you’re probably familiar with the term SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization). You probably know this relates to how you set up and wrote the content for your website so that it would get high rankings on the search engines. But did you know how much backlinks contribute to the success of your website? Lots of quality one-way backlinks-meaning links from another site to yours for a legitimate reason-help improve your rankings in those search engines.
While there are services that will sell your links, and sites that allow you to swap large numbers of links with other users, these can be seriously detrimental to your search engine rankings. Major search engines are aware of this practice, and when they’re able to ferret it out, they penalize sites for doing it. It’s far better to get a dozen one way backlinks over the course of a month than to purchase 1,000 paid links or make a quick 100 link trade. Fortunately there are many things you can do to organically develop backlinks to your site that will boost your search engine rankings significantly. Here are seven great ways to get high quality one way backlinks to your website.
1. Write and Market Articles. Whatever your website is about, you can write articles about your topic that other people will find helpful. Then you can use these articles at article sites where people are looking for information. This can generate traffic to your website at no cost to your advertising budget.
There are numerous sites where you can place these articles where they will get lots of readers. Goarticles.com, eHow.com, and ezinearticles.com are three such sites that get lots of interest. You can write the article, make it helpful and informative, and then include a link to your website and a brief biography about yourself as the writer in a resource box on the page with the article. With some of these kinds of sites, you may also be able to embed links into the article that can add more backlinks.
2. Create and Market Videos. You can also create interesting and helpful videos about the topics you deal with on your website and then publicize your video. The more people that watch your video, the better results your website will get. And the more they pass your link to that video along to their friends and contacts, the more backlinks you can get which will raise your rankings in the search engines. You can get lots of great backlinks to your video via a newsletter, reference to it in a blog or a forum, etc. You may even be able to include your link in your signature when you respond to posts on other people’s websites and forums-just be sure you check the rules first.
Twitter is another great way to announce new video content. On Twitter you have–0 characters with which to convince people to click on a link to your site. This can be very effective because of the huge number of people who use Twitter to quickly search for information.
3. Social Bookmarking. You can encourage backlinks with Social Bookmarking sites like Digg.com, del.icio.us, and stumbleupon.com. With sites like these, you can submit a link to your website, and people visiting the site will see it when they look for new information related to your website. Not only can they easily visit and watch your video, they can “second” your submission by vouching for it as having good content. The more people who see and like your content, the more prominent the link to your video will become, and the more high quality backlinks you’ll earn.
4. Use Squidoo Lens. Similar to the article sites listed above, Squidoo publishes content you submit. However, in this case the content is called “lenses” and includes video, pictures, and text. You use a multimedia approach to share information and garner readers. You can create lenses about many topics-such as your business or specific products. These lenses will help generate backlinks and traffic to your website.
5. Create Your Own Hubpages. Like Squidoo, Hubpages lets you create pages containing content to include text, pictures, video, and links. It’s easy to do. Just create your own account and get started. You can create lots and lots of Hubpages for different specific topics to get more traffic coming to your website and generate new quality backlinks, as well.
6. Submit to Directories. Directory submission is related to submitting to search engines, only it involves submitting to the directories that evaluate the content of websites before they are accepted and listed. Many sites are submitted, so editors can be very selective. So be sure you follow the directions for submissions to the letter and submit in the proper category or subcategory.
7. Use Social Media Sites. You’re probably already familiar with these sites. Social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, DeviantArt, and others. Using sites like this and creating pages for you and your business is very effective in getting backlinks and higher search engine ratings-as long as you keep them current so people don’t forget about you. Also remember that you need to stay professional on these kinds of sites even though they are often used by teens and young adults that may be very irreverent in their communications among themselves. You still need to put a professional image on your business and website.
You can get lots of one-way backlinks using these seven ideas. Begin with one approach and do it consistently and regularly. Slowly add new approaches as you are able. You’ll soon have higher rankings on the search engines and more visitors to your website!
To really increase your backlink building, be sure to visit SmartMediaInnovations.com to find out about the best methods available to help your SEO efforts today!
Tags: Backlinks, one way backlinks, SEO
